


Is Love Always Like Butterflies To You?

by teenuviel1227



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Angst, Coming of Age, Infidelity, Jaehyungparkian, M/M, The One Who Got Away, it is sad but also i hope a good read, lots of character development though, side-parkbros, side-youngfeel, the M rating is mostly for mature themes, the smut is clear but not very graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-03 23:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14580444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenuviel1227/pseuds/teenuviel1227
Summary: It should have been them--a sentence that Jae and Brian whisper to each other under the sheets for years and years as they meet in clandestine places, rendezvous in different cities even as their lives, their husbands, their jobs, wait for them back home. A summer spent in splendor when they were young--and then promises unfulfilled all leading to a single night in Paris, a question--until when can they keep this up? Will they?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A little bit darker than usual for me, but I wanted my 50th fic to be something I wouldn’t ordinarily post. Happier things soon but I hope this is a good reading experience nonetheless. There will be two chapters; the next one will go up tomorrow. Also, I just have to say that this is in no way, shape, or form me romanticizing infidelity, in fact Jae and Brian more than pay for what they do. But it’s a story that I felt needed to be told for people going through these things, for people who’ve gone through these things. 
> 
> There is no graphic smut in this, the M is for mature themes.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading. 
> 
> Title is from One More Chance – 널 생각해 (I Think About You)
> 
> Twt/CC: teenuviel1227

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time, tide.

“Come back to bed,” Jae says, voice low, soft in the quiet summer night. The room is the faded dark-blue of moonlight in the city: starless but bright, resisting complete darkness as if even that is afraid to be seen. He props himself up on the bed with his elbows, pulling the blanket up toward his bare chest. “Bri?”

Brian is sitting by the window, looking out at the city night, his back silhouetted against the warm light coming in from the streetlamp outside. He glances back at Jae, smiles apologetically. Jae can see the worry on his face clear-as-day, has learned to recognize it by now, can spot it a mile away--but there’s something deeper about it tonight, more persistent like a groove in the sand that refuses to be washed away by the tide.

“Sorry, babe. I couldn’t sleep.” 

“No shit,” Jae jokes, sighing before dragging himself out of bed to join Brian by the window. The moonlight falls on his skin, turning his milky complexion ethereal, glowing. His dark hair catches in the light. He leans in, wraps his arms around Brian’s shoulders, pressing a kiss to his temple. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay.” 

“Mmmm.” Brian smiles, closes his eyes as he presses his cheek softly against Jae’s hands, kissing his palms. His eyes are sad. A crease refuses to budge from where it’s drawn between his brows.“Baby?”

“Yeah?” Jae asks, seating himself gently, slowly in Brian’s lap. Outside the balcony, the rest of Paris hums: street cars, sirens, the steady buzz of traffic. “What is it?”

Brian looks up at him, brushing his thumbs against Jae’s eyebrows, the arch of his nose, the apples of his cheeks, his lips, letting them linger a moment longer than usual as if doing so could commit the terrain, the landscape of Jae’s face to memory. As if touch could make a map of his love so that he could pull it out at a moment’s notice and say  _ aha. There you are.  _ He takes a breath before he answers, kissing Jae’s shoulder softly. Jae smells like vanilla and peach body wash. 

“How long can we keep this up?” Brian says the question softly, hesitantly, like the opposite of wishing on a star: tell anyone so it won’t come true, say it as tentatively as possible if you are afraid of the answer. He feels Jae tense and then sigh in his arms. He holds him tighter. “How long are we going to keep doing this?” 

“Do you not want to anymore?” Jae asks softly, taking Brian’s face in his hands, cupping his cheeks and looking into his eyes before kissing him soft, slow. “Tell me you don’t want me anymore and in a heartbeat, I’ll--” 

“--leave him,” Brian whispers against Jae’s lips. “Leave him and I’ll drop everything for you like  _ that _ .” 

Jae holds Brian close, trying to memorize the way he feels in his arms, the way that he smells like lemons and honey, the way that he is both broad and small, a heart cradled in his arms.  _ I love you _ , he mouths against the warmth of Brian’s skin, hoping to god that he knows. Just in case it’s the last time. 

  
  


The first time it happened was by the beach: the cool September day bright but overcast, the clouds pale in the gray-blue sky, the seagreen water lapping at their heels as they stood in the surf--Jae in a blue argyle sweater and white jeans folded up at the ankles, Brian in a loose concert shirt tucked into ripped denims that were too skinny to push up, the hems of them soaked in the surf. Jae wore his sunglasses on the edge of his nose, squinting against the sunlight. Brian’s straw hat shivered in the wind. 

They were in the south of France, Jae was a newly-minted nineteen and Brian still seventeen, just shy of his eighteenth birthday. In so many ways, it was like meeting themselves for the first time: recognizing themselves in the other, a reflection, a shadow, a friend after years of being alone. It wasn’t so much a vacation as it was prison-away-from-prison as they were both pulled out of their respective schools again, their parents archeologists sent to the riviera to study some shipwrecks that had surfaced in one of the coves. Indefinite leave, the forms had said--it’s what the forms had always said.

Both of them felt they should be used to these things by now, both of them having grown up with childhoods that had about as much stability as an active volcano--constantly being uprooted, losing friends too fast to make them, self-studying their way through every exam, never having the opportunity for anything even resembling a love life. There were crushes, sure, but risking a fling was like diving into a pit of sharks and hoping not to be torn apart. Why subject yourself to the heartache? Why give yourself up to that kind of torture?

It was only that autumn that Jae finally understood what it meant to ask a bigger, faster-moving body to take you into itself, what it meant to ask something with teeth to give you a taste of your own blood, your own life. The moment that he laid eyes on Brian, all killer eyes and dangerous smile slumped in a chair in his parents’ hotel room, reading an old Rolling Stone issue, he’d known that he wanted him, wanted him to want him back. It was something in the way that he sat, the way he raised his eyebrows to say hello, the way he smiled when Jae cracked a joke: he was both resigned and defiant, accepting and in extreme rebellion of the situation. He reminded Jae of a line from one of the Harry Potter books, the Snitch’s motto:  _ I open at the close.  _ A kiss: the path to life immortal, life not realized. 

And so Jae had brought his mouth to Brian again and again over the years, first to open him up, and then to free them both. And so, they had begun: that immortal dance that neither of them would be able to fully give up. In later years, Jae would whisper that line to Brian as they lay in bed next to each other, watching the sun rise on another day comprised of more time they’d stolen to be together. Time borrowed, made up: but what of their time together hadn’t been so? They met on their parents’ research trip: collateral damage in the study of archeology. 

When they’re thirty-three and Brian has  _ I open at the close _ tattooed on his hip, when Jae traces it for the first time, his heart lurches as he wonders about the other person who would trace that line after they’d been together, who’d perhaps traced it before, thinking it merely a childhood whim, only something loved from a book, only a line to be remembered. His heart seethes with envy as he thinks about the person to whom that right belonged, belongs: a right that once, yes, had been his. 

That summer, it was all his. 

Jae had Brian at first laugh, first snicker, first witty thing to escape from those lips that puckered pink and spit-slick even in the autumn gloom.  _ Watcha doin’?  _ Jae had asked on that first afternoon when his parents had dropped him off at Brian’s parents’ hotel room in the hopes that they make nice, become friends, form some kind of neglected-kid-study-group.  _ Watcha doin’ _ like they’d known each other forever--none of that stuffiness and stick-up-the-assness that he’d gotten so used to from his parents’ colleagues’ children.  _ Watcha doin’ _ like they’d been in the same room all this time and only now just picked up the thread of conversation again. 

_ Oh, there you are. _

“Watcha doin’?” Jae had asked one more time on that fateful day by the beach, this time his voice a hushed whisper, eyes wide as Brian stepped toward him in the surf, their noses coming dangerously close, their shoulders almost touching--the wind-blown sleeves of Brian’s shirt up against the fabric of Jae’s sweater. 

“What do you think?” Brian had countered, grinning as he slowly took Jae’s sunglasses off, slipping them into his pocket before putting a hand to Jae’s waist, pulling him closer. The sea gasped, roared against their legs, their toes touching in the sand, the water. Brian had grinned then, noticing that Jae’s cheeks were flushed, that he was blinking quick like a reel of film begging to be watched. And so, Brian had born witness, had leaned in and kissed him: lips against lips and then parting, tongues licking sure as the sun, sure as the sea, sure as the mountains that stood behind them, as the statues in the ships their parents were unearthing from whatever had laid claim to them so long. 

Whenever Jae thinks back to that moment, he has the sensation of being flung off a cliff: his stomach all a-flutter, the axis of him lost, a compass spinning, spinning, spinning before it points North, refuses to budge. One moment he was who he’d been all his life--the next, he had become someone else completely: beloved, the shore licked at by the waves it couldn’t stop craving, the body it couldn’t stop asking to crash against it. 

_ Again, Bri. Please. _

Months later, when everything ended, when they’d kissed and held hands and made slow love in hotel beds and fucked on motorboats and stroked each other to satisfaction in hidden coves by the shoreline and had had coffees together in the mornings and told more secrets and drank more wine from the bottle while looking out at the sea at night more times than either of them could count, when their parents announced that it was finally time to go home, Brian found himself thinking back to that moment, that first kiss. He thought of how slow and sudden everything had been: the most beautiful of contradictions. In a way, it had taken forever, those two weeks where they’d first become friends forcing him to quell the desire burning under his skin like an oil spill set ablaze that even a storm couldn’t quench--but in so many ways, all of it had only been an instant, a moment like the pulling back of a slingshot before a stone sailed through the air. He’d thrown himself headlong into the impetous and Jae had caught him, lips slightly parted, tasting of the sea. 

_ I open at the close.  _

Next summer, they’d promised each other at the train station as their parents talked about conferences and journals and promotions, the word  _ tenure  _ always close at hand. Next summer, they’d both said, forgetting it wasn’t summer at all. It was saying goodbye to winter, saying hello to the spring of their lives: graduation and then college, and then the Great Unknown. 

It wasn’t that they didn’t try: it was simply that the tides had turned on them, the wind shifting in a sail. They’d met before Facebook, before a name was a tether to anything. And anyway, neither of them were very active online, both of them more resigned to their fields of study (Brian to his violin-playing, Jae to his debates and immersion in the study of governments and infrastructure), their passions in a way their only friends before they found each other--and again, after that their only companions. They had e-mail addresses, exchanged short, flirty letters for a while, but there was only so much to say. 

_ Watcha doin’? _

_ Nothing much.  _

_ Same.  _

Life got in the way. Plaid on argyle, a kiss on the beach on a cloudy day--the tides of time blurring a word in the sand. Metallica t-shirt, argyle sweater, hands slipping sure as sunrise into back jean pockets, hoping to stay. 

  
  


The first thing that Brian noticed about Wonpil was the sweater--argyle, like Jae’s, only hot pink instead of blue, spring instead of fall: call it projection, call it schema, call it misplaced nostalgia, but in that moment, Brian only found it funny, only found it endearing how such an elegant man could put on such a garrish thing and still smile. Brian was twenty-two, just having graduated from the conservatory of music when he’d met him: a mixer for people applying to the school’s ladderized program. Kim Wonpil was twenty-one, ace pianist from the rival university who’d beat him in everything, all of the qualifiers: the  _ only  _ one who’d even come close. Both of them in the running for the associate professor post, both of them extremely qualified, both of them being accepted by the university--a first in the longest time.

“Congratulations, Professor Kim,” Brian had said--and Wonpil had only smiled that small smile like a secret, like he knew something that Brian didn’t. It was that grin that even now, even after everything, Brian still loves, still feels his heart flutter at to see. Maybe it was that too: the cutting wit, the mouth like something clandestine he wanted in on. 

“Not so bad yourself, Professor Kang,” Wonpil had shot back, clinking his glass with Brian’s before downing his cocktail and walking away. “Here’s to me kicking your ass at being the most loved IntComp prof.” 

Brian had laughed, not used to being brushed off, not used to being the one left standing helpless and sober. 

It was a slow burn, a courtship that moved like lava: earth and fire, the flames of passion and work running high in both of them. They kept the competition close but friendly--whenever Wonpil played a concerto, Brian would be in the audience, ready with some quip about staccatos ( _ it’s all in the wrists) _ or timing or how he played worse than Maxim on crack, but in the moment he would watch Wonpil and become completely enamored: his deep-set eyes, his shoulders, his mouth set in that determined line, his hands as they slid sure over the keys. Brian would watch Wonpil play the piano and feel some part of him quake, quiver, swoon, desire licking at his spine--was it lust disguised as admiration or the other way around? And whenever Brian had a violin showcase or a string quartet performance, Wonpil would be waiting for him off-stage with flowers and that smile, accompanied with an insult or a jab that excited Brian-- _ too bad you didn’t break a string _ or  _ I didn’t know you played the saw _ . And always, it would end with them going to dinner, with them talking late into the night about anything and everything. 

It took about a year of meandering, a year of dancing around each other, of having each other’s students help them with pranks, before they finally went out on a proper date. In the end it was simple, Wonpil slamming his coffee cup down on Brian’s desk as he was grading papers, and Brian looking up in surprise to see him smiling, this time with a secret meant for him. 

“What?”

“Are you ever going to ask me out or are we going to insult each other until one of us keels over and dies?” 

It was Brian’s turn to smile as he stood, scooping Wonpil onto the desk, all of the papers flying, the coffee mug spilling onto everything as Wonpil pulled him close and kissed him--pressing earth to fire, setting both of them ablaze as he  kissed him, licked into his mouth, wrapped his legs around him. It was different. Of course it was different. Wonpil was not Jae--a volcano is not the sea--but he was a different kind of magic altogether: Brian felt like he was being woken up, like he could write all the songs and all of the symphonies in the world. 

_ Sustain _ , Brian thought then, tracing the musical notation of it onto Wonpil’s nape. Wonpil grinned against him, getting the joke, the plea.  _ Please last. Please stay.  _

And he had. That night, they’d gone home to Brian’s place, had made love on the cramped single bed until both of them couldn’t go any longer, until Wonpil’s legs ached and Brian’s knees and elbows were sore, until they were more sated than aroused, more sleepy and hungry than burning with desire. They’d ordered take out, eaten it cross-legged on Brian’s couch. After, Brian had picked up his old acoustic guitar, setting aside his violin for a simpler, more straightforward friend and singing Wonpil an acoustic rendition of La Vie En Rose. Cheesy but it was a cheesy night, a romantic night. 

“Hey, Bri,” Wonpil said from where he sat on the couch, Brian’s oversized shirt draped over his shoulders but open at the chest. 

“Mmmm?” 

“I know I never say it because we were pretending to hate each other but I love when you sing. It--it makes me feel like I’m a bird being set free.” 

Brian had grinned then, set his guitar aside, sat next to Wonpil and kissed him slow and tender, holding their foreheads together after, a hand on Wonpil’s nape, tracing the sustain symbol there again.  _ Be mine. Stay.  _ On their wedding day, it would be Wonpil who traced it onto Brian’s palm as they stood in front of the judge, both of them dressed in white suits they’d donned so many times before for concertos. Brian grinned and whispered  _ for as long as you’ll have me _ sing-song in his ear. 

Surer than rings, surer than paper. 

The one thing that both of them trusted: music.

And after, after Brian and Jae met again, after the rendezvous started, after Wonpil unearthed email after email after email, after he traced that tattoo that Brian had done on his hip and knew that whatever it was was something he wasn’t privy to, it was that symbol Brian had drawn like a rune on his nape, the insides of his wrists, the small of his back, that had kept him from leaving. After all, how could you fault someone for having been in love? Who was to say he would have done different? 

Except Wonpil also knew that he would have, that he wouldn’t have traded or borrowed anyone at the risk of Brian. 

Through the fights and going to bed knowing that Brian was beside him in body but his mind was somewhere else, through the knowing that whenever he came home from his business trip in September, he’d been in another city: Vienna, London, Paris, in someone else’s bed--no, in a bed that belonged to no one--it was that symbol, that promise sung in his ear that made him get up in the morning and try again. It always took time to bring Brian back out of that haze, out of trying and failing to be seventeen again.  _ For as long as you’ll have me _ , he’d said--and Wonpil thought it everytime he was kissing Brian softly, crooning love songs into his ear until he smiled, until he laughed, until he put a hand to Wonpil’s waist and he knew that  _ his _ Brian was back, that  _ his  _ Brian was seeing  _ him _ . 

And it’s that which Wonpil says when Brian comes home the last time, crying, kneeling at his feet, holding him close, asking for forgiveness, his sobs making the words run into each other.  _ I understand if you can’t forgive me I don’t deserve I’m sorry I’m so so sorry I understand if you hate me just please please I’ll never I won’t I”m done.  _

“I’m not done with you yet, love.” 

  
  


Jae and Brian meet again in Oslo: it’s a diplomatic conference on a winter day and they’re snowed in. Jae is there representing the State of California, Brian is there because they’ve hired a quartet for the banquet and he’d been sent over as New York’s best. The storm is frustrating--the signal is knocked out, the power is out, the entire place only running on generator power. Brian was sitting in the lobby, slumped in an armchair, flipping through a Swedish music magazine where Wonpil had been featured: Brian wanted to send him photos, to tease him about the fact that they managed to call him both  _ handsome  _ and  _ gorgeous _ in the same paragraph but had only mentioned the word  _ piano _ once in the entire piece. He’d already had the message typed out, ready to send:  _ HAH I knew it. You tricked me with your handsome jaw and gorgeous eyes!  _

And then Brian heard someone clear his throat--and then his heart was pounding.  _ It can’t be.  _

“Watcha doin’?”

He looked up and into those soft eyes, that playful mouth: Jae’s blonde hair was black now and his glasses were no longer that tortoise-shell aviator shape, plastic traded in for metal, silver shining in the hotel’s light--but he was gorgeous all the same. It started up again in Brian, then, like pressing your ear to a conch shell and hearing the ocean sing. 

Jae felt it too--that odd tug, like smelling perfume and being teleported back to an instance in time you hadn’t realized that you’d lost. When he’d spotted Brian, he thought for a moment that maybe he’d been mistaken, that maybe he’d just had to go and look closer, but the closer he’d looked, the clearer it became just how right he was. He would know that posture anywhere: the slight angling to the left, the eyes half-lidded as he flipped through his magazine, his smile half-lifted as if sharing an inside joke with someone who wasn’t there. And so he’d walked like someone enthralled, someone moving through a dream. 

And then Brian had looked up at him and Jae had felt himself drowning, like his feet were sinking into the sand, his heart already breaking, a part of him already knowing what he wanted.  

_ Watcha doin’?  _

“Holy shit,” Brian said, standing up and leaning in to hug him, clap him on the back. It felt strange, a gesture between strangers. “Jae. How the hell have you been?” 

Jae catches Brian’s eye, catches his gaze flit from Jae’s wedding ring to his own.  _ Ah.  _ A wave of relief had come over him, then, a strange understanding--or maybe a wild hope that things wouldn’t go there, that they were different people now, that they would have the restraint to hold back. And so Jae had sat next to Brian and they’d started talking: about life thus far, about Jae’s job as a lobbyist for the State of California, about Jae’s husband (Sungjin of Park & Sons, one of the bigger firms in L.A.), about how he’d found the conference, about what they had planned for the gala the night before, about Brian’s career, about Brian’s husband, about how terrible the storm was, about how soon the power would be out and it would be their responsibility to clean out the minibar. 

“Responsibility,” Jae had repeated, erupting into laughter, his whole body curling into a pale wave of milk. The shape, the sound of it made Brian’s heart soar. “If only alcohol were the only responsibility as an adult, huh.” 

Brian snorted. “If only. Taxes are a  _ bitch _ . Never write “professor” on your tax forms.” 

“I never will,” Jae said, grinning. "It's  _Atty._ Jae to you nowadays, BriBri."

"Is that so?" A mischievous smile, a look--a nd then the power had gone out.

And then the staff had given everyone old-fashioned gas lamps. And then they’d taken the stairs up--Jae was on the eighth, Brian on the ninth. And as they lingered on the landing, there had been a moment of silence in which the question lay unspoken between them. Jae holding Brian’s gaze, smiling a soft, sad smile that he saw reflected on Brian’s face: again, both of them seeing themselves for the first time, both of them hoping if only for an instance to be young again, to be blameless and lonely and able to surrender to anything that would lift them out of it. 

It was Jae that had spoken up. 

“Your room or mine?” 

 

 

They made it to Jae’s room because it was closer, both of them not speaking on the way there, as though saying anything would break the spell, would bind them to knowing that they weren’t supposed to be doing this, that this was a night that shouldn’t be--an anomaly in space-time, a blur of a film reel caught between frames. They set the lamps down on the end tables, and slowly, like gears of a clock ticking backward begin to undress each other: coats pushed off shoulders, ties undone, scarves dropped to the floor, buttons and clasps undone, both of them staring at each other as they stand naked, the rope of remembering drawing them close as Brian seals the space between them with a kiss. Jae sighs into it, a billion memories and hopes and unfulfilled promises coursing through him as Brian licks into his mouth, takes his lower lip between his teeth, nipping before he kisses the hollow of Jae’s neck, the line of his shoulders, his chest. Jae pushes Brian onto the bed, the rest of it a work in memory: swimming lessons--inhale, dive, exhale, thrash against pleasure, crash into a body you loved, a body you didn’t marry. 

Afterward, they lie in each other’s arms, quiet, still, both of them not daring to say anything, both of them drowning in guilt, both of them wondering where this is going to go. It’s Brian who breaks the silence, Brian who finds the words first. 

“Do you remember that phrase you used to tell me all the time?” 

“Which one?”

“I open at the close.”

“How could I forget,” Jae says, resting his chin on Brian’s chest, glancing up at him. “What about it?” 

“I was closed,” Brian whispers, tilting Jae’s chin up toward him, his lips trembling against Jae’s. “I was closed.” 

Tears well in his eyes as he kisses Jae, lips savoring the feeling, the taste of lips soft and long-missed, loved long ago. “I was--”

“--I know,” Jae says, sobbing against him, holding him close. “Me too.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> House, home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for letting me break your hearts. Also, I broke my own heart too. S’ok you can sue.
> 
> I'll correct typos tomorrow.

Sungjin’s dad is Jae’s first boss. His first job is executive assistant to Atty. Sungjin Park, Sr. The first time that Jae sees Sungjin, Jr. he feels his heart ricochet like a bullet off of a parked car and into a furnace--an explosion that sets off his car-alarm heart, every window in the neighborhood of love and lust turning the light on. Despite the fire in his veins, Jae doesn’t even think about it, doesn’t even pause to ponder the possibility, because Park Sungjin is gorgeous, smart, built like a battle axe but with kind eyes and easy laughter, a voice that ruled the karaoke machines at office parties. Everyone wanted him--Jae had taken one look, a deep breath, and disqualified himself immediately. It wasn’t that he thought he was ugly or anything--it was just that Jae _knew_ what he had going for him: off-kilter humor, slightly awkward mannerisms, the sly confidence of a snake wearing deer’s clothing. Jae knew the kinds of people who were attracted to him, knew they came Brian Kang-shaped, equal in amounts of resentment and sadness, in their timbre of loneliness, a hopefulness ringing in a labyrinth. They didn’t wear designer suits and only half-wear their expensive leather shoes, denting the leather, didn’t graduate top of their class at Yale and play football and still help executive assistants out with law school applications like it was nothing.

Jae had long put himself in a category of in-between colors: teal, aubergine--whereas Sungjin was pure brightness, incandescent, canary yellow, the golden boy. Heir to the throne, the crown prince.

People like Sungjin just didn’t go for people like Jae.

Sure, there were moments when the thought had occurred to him--when Sungjin lingered at his desk before heading into his father’s office, asking Jae what song he was listening to on that particular day, when Sungjin left him a small box of chocolates for Valentine’s day (but then again, he’d given everyone else cards too, so Jae had just figured that was normal), when Sungjin had helped him out with his forms for law school--but everytime, he pushed it aside. Everytime, he tucked the moment neat as an old photograph and stuck it in the pocket of his heart: kindness to look back on on a rainy day, a small moment of sunshine when a gorgeous man looked at him and it almost looked like longing.

And then the gala happens--the annual banquet which the company hosted for its clients, for the CEOs of the top corporations who patronized their legal services. Jae had already arranged everything for Mr. Park: the limo, the suit, the brief on which CEOs would be there, but had decided to sit the gala out. He had to study for his law school entrance test, had a lot of work to do in such a short span of time. Being pulled out of school for so long to go on those long study trips with his parents had taken its toll: Jae was older, all of twenty-four and still just applying for civil service grants, further education, still just earning his stripes. He’d prepared himself for a long, gruelling weekend of intensive reading, ready to have his entire field of vision become occupied by highlighter-colored text. He’d stocked up on the coffee, had put away anything that could distract him (video games, magazines, DVDs, his phone), and had bunkered down, sitting as his desk and memorizing terms, trying to remember everything that he needed to remember until his eyes couldn’t stay open any longer and there was a crick in his neck.

He’d been about to fall asleep, about to lay his cheek to the bright blue-colored page, when the doorbell rang. Jae frowned, annoyed at the fact that it was probably someone for his neighbor who’d hit the wrong unit, irritated that a part of him had been hoping it was food delivery--except he’d been so engrossed in studying that he hadn’t ordered food. He closed his eyes. _Maybe if I ignore them, they’ll go away._

And then a voice--deep, husky, playful.

“Jae?”

Jae’s heart leapt at the sound of his voice. _Why is he here?_ For a moment, he panics, wondering if he’d left something out for Mr. Park: some small detail, some important document, some miniscule but important thing that ended up being so crucial that he had to ask his son to come get it. _Suit, tie, list of attendees, cue cards for the speech, case of cigars to be gifted to the CEO of Han Bank. All there. I know it’s all there._

“Hold on!” Hurriedly, Jae threw a robe over his undershirt and sweatpants combo, ran a hand through his blonde hair. He rolled his eyes at himself in the mirror. _Whatever, it’ll have to do._

Jae pulled the door open and there was Sungjin: coat hung over one shoulder, his tie undone, sleeves rolled up, dark hair falling into his eyes just right.

“What’re you doing here?”

“You know what--I’m not so sure myself,” Sungjin grinned, his face flushed. Jae realized he’d probably had a bit to drink, noted that the smile on Sungjin’s lips was wider, easier than usual, his shoulders losing that tense posture he held so often at work. Remembering himself, Sungjin held up the bag he was holding in his left hand. “I brought you food, I guess.”

“You brought me food,” Jae repeated, blinking repeatedly, not quite sure what he was hearing. “You _guess_.”

Sungjin shrugged, handing Jae the plastic bag. “Yeah.”

“Oh.” Jae felt himself blush, felt the skin on his throat, his cheeks, his ears burn. “Thanks. Um so--do you want to come in--”

“--um,” Sungjin took a deep breath, chewed for a moment on his lower lip--and in that instance of nervousness, that small moment of hesitation, Jae recognized what this was, saw himself in that instant: himself at nineteen as he’d seen himself in Brian standing on the beach, flustered and wanting, about to say something, about to take it back, on the cusp of fighting or fleeing, knowing that whatever chance at an in-between had passed. “Yeah, sure.”

Jae had smiled a small smile to himself, then, hope unfurling itself in his chest like a drop of paint into a jar of clear water. Bleeding light. Maybe Park Sungjin was more tangerine than incandescent light after all--more shadow than Jae had given light credit for.

Sungjin had paced the room as Jae laid out the food, take-out from the gala: fancy crab cakes and entrees, egg rolls and unconventional sushi, pasta with truffle oil.

“Sorry it isn’t much.”

“No, this is plenty--I’ve been on zombie mode all day--”

“I know the feeling.”

“Thanks,” Jae said, smiling softly as he took a bite out of an egg roll. He raised an eyebrow. “Have I passed the fire safety requirements?”

Sungjin laughed. He was looking at the photographs that Jae had hung up on his wall by the bookshelf. A photograph of Jae and his parents, his graduation picture, a couple of 1x1 ID pictures stuck with blue tack onto the wall as a joke by a couple of drunk college friends--an old polaroid of him and Brian sitting by the beach, Jae’s nose buried in Brian’s neck, his hair a blonde blur as the wind blew through it, Brian’s smile bright, his arms wound tight around Jae.

“--boyfriend?” Sungjin asked tentatively, peering at the photograph, trying to gauge how long ago it was from how old Jae seems in the photograph, scanning the periphery for similar pictures.

“My first love,” Jae replied. “He was a friend who I made on a summer vacation to the riviera.”

“Ah. You don’t talk anymore?”

Jae shook his head, spooning pasta into this mouth. “Haven’t had the chance.”

Sungjin took it as a no. And Jae had taken Sungjin: had been the one to step forward, this time, had seated Sungjin on his sofa, had cracked out a bottle of wine, had poured them both a glass, had picked their poison. He’d leaned in, asked Sungjin a simple question: the apple asking to be plucked, to be taken.

“Yes or no?” Jae grinned, toying with the fabric of Sungjin’s sleeve. He watched the perplexed expression move across Sungjin’s face, again marvelling at how perfect it was: deep set eyes, bold jaw, broad mouth--how safe and strong and still. _A rock to build a life on._ Jae, the thrashing sea--Sungjin, a place to curl against, to be held fast to, to rest with.

“Yes or no _what_?” Sungjin laughed, taking a sip of wine.

Jae shrugged, grinning. “Just--yes or no, answer the question.”

“You’ll make a terrible litigator.” Sungjin’s eyes were bright, his grin soft, fond.

“Oh _really_?” Jae burst out laughing, smiling wide. “Because I think I can actually be pretty damn compelling. I’ll bet you’re going to answer my question.”

“Oh yeah, why’s that?” Sungjin raised an eyebrow, suddenly aware of how close their knees were on the sofa, suddenly aware of Jae’s fingers slipping into the sleeve of his shirt, not touching him, but touching around him, the peripheries of his being. The softness of a fingertip against the delicate inside of his wrist. Sweat began to bead on his forehead, the tip of his nose.

“Because that’s how I decide.”

“Decide what?”

“Whether or not to kiss you.”

“If you have the chance--you should take it,” Sungjin had joked, setting his wineglass down on the coffee table--and Jae had leaned in and kissed him square on the mouth. It was a fierce, passionate kiss: hot and wet and slick and open before either of them realized it, all tongue and teeth. Before Sungjin knew it, they were a tangle of limbs, Jae’s hands on _him_  now, Jae’s fingers undoing the buttons on his shirt, palms exploring the terrain of his chest as Sungjin moved his mouth lower, lower, to the lobe of Jae’s ear, the hollow of his throat. Sungjin peeled back Jae’s robe, watching in wonder as clothing shed milk skin blushing crimson at his touch. It was a lightning bolt romance: they’d fucked until neither of them could get up off the couch, had lain in each other’s arms until the sun came up.

In the aftermath, as they’d lain there sweaty and sated, Jae resting his head on Sungjin’s chest, Sungjin playing with Jae’s hair, Sungjin found himself thinking about two things: the first was that he wanted to marry Jae, absolutely and irrevocably would give anything to be able to do _that,_  to have _this_ for the rest of his life. The second was something his father used to say about rules, about the law, which up until then he’d disagreed with immensely: you could set all the rules you want for something, but inevitably, there is someone who will make you break them.

For Jae, Sungjin would break all of his dating rationales, all of the lessons he’d picked up over the years. He would date his father’s assistant, would rush into it, would play the fool if it got him his prince.

Sungjin proposed the following month when Jae had gotten into law school and Jae, just as smitten, had said yes _yes it might be kinda dumb but hell fucking yes._  The wedding was grand, hosted on the Parks’ estate for the length of a week, Sungjin’s father pulling out all the stops: his protege and his son--and a Park too--what more could he ask for? There were fairy lights and a live band, Sungjin and Jae giggling like idiots as they waltzed across the floor, fubbing up the steps and breaking into a ridiculous freestyle dance instead until Sungjin settled for pulling Jae in by the waist, kissing him slow. When they pulled apart, Jae looked up at Sungjin, then, and wondered if this was an ending that he deserved: him of the broken promises and neglected childhood, of the academic upbringing and learnedness in cutting class, of the ignoring his parents every time that they called because he didn’t want to hear about the new grant and how good things were going, how every phone call was tinged in disappointment that he wasn’t them, wasn’t like them.

In that moment, Sungjin had looked at him and smiled, holding him close, kissing every knuckle on his hand and pressing it to his chest, right above the heart. Their wedding song was Blue Moon. Sungjin had sung it then, in his husky voice: _and then there suddenly appeared before me, the only one my arms will hold, I heard someone whisper “please adore me” and when I looked, the moon had turned to gold._

Jae had grinned, pushing those thoughts out of his head, content for once to just let himself be held, just let himself be moved to music that he loved in the arms of the man he married.

“Yes or no?” Sungjin asked, then, his warm breath whispering against the lobe of Jae’s ear. Jae could feel him grinning.

“If I get the chance,” Jae had replied, smiling. “Was that about which toys you’re going to use later or--”

Sungjin laughed. “--pervert.”

“So it is?”

“If you’re lucky.”

(He was.)

 

 

Later on, after the happy years pass: years of warm laughter, of crass, playful jokes whispered against the hollow of Jae’s neck as Sungjin threatened to tickle him just as he was about to fall asleep, years of Jae’s arms holding Sungjin tighter when he made to get up in the morning, asking him not to go when he had to leave early to get to court on time, years that had Sungjin feeling for a moment like an old stone weathered into smoothness by Jae, whose moods and thoughts and lilting laughter were so much like the sea lulling him to sleep--after Sungjin finds the envelope of hidden receipts, notices the plane tickets charged to their joint account, after he sees a photograph in Jae’s wallet of himself and Brian in one of those metro photobooths dated just a few years ago, not really touching, just smiling and looking at the camera, he will lie awake thinking about what, precisely, about that photograph bothers him and trace it all the way back to that first day in Jae’s living room.

In the photo booth picture, there was an expression on Jae’s face, that same one that told him not to go in the mornings, that asked him to make them hot chocolate on Christmas--except in the picture, he was looking at Brian, making it at Brian, asking him to stay, to come closer. In the picture, Sungjin knew in his heart of hearts that Jae was holding back the impulse to lean in and bury his nose in the hollow of Brian’s neck, to get him to laugh like that old polaroid on the beach, the one that he’d taken down after they started going out. It was in the way Jae’s hand was clenched into a fist as though the act of staying still itself was a struggle, the way that his smile didn’t quite meet his eyes, the way that Brian seemed to be about to lean toward him.

Intimacies are small but telling, small bits of punctuation that spoke louder than the longest sentences. That photograph was the loudest: Sungjin’s heart a row of cars with alarms going off in the dead of night on an otherwise peaceful street.

Above all, Sungjin will think that he should’ve known better, should’ve known even back then when it all started. As a lawyer, he should’ve known that anything short of the answer wasn’t _the_ answer: _haven’t had the chance_ , Jae had said--he’d taken it as a no, taken it as a joke, missing the bigger question.

What if he had the chance?

There isn’t really anything _wrong_ , only a kind of absence to Jae whenever he returns--the sea isn’t meant to grow still, but it does. After he’d come back from Oslo that first time, Jae was somewhere else, drifting, every conversation feeling more and more like biding time, Sungjin feeling more and more alone. Where was that soft laughter? Where were those pointed jokes? Where was that passion that he admired, that warmth that he loved, those hands always just short of sliding around his waist, his chest, lips always ready for soft kissing, for tender whispers under the sheets?

Eventually, Sungjin had found a way: learned that he needed to work at getting Jae back, at coaxing him into the moment, but it had gotten harder over time, like reeling in a ship that kept on drifting farther and farther from shore. More resistance, heavier. Whenever Jae snapped out of it, which he hated because it reminded him just how wonderful Sungjin was, just how warm he could be, just how thoughtful, how kind, he did his best to compensate: took Sungjin out, cooked for him, made love to him until the sun came up.

But the forgiveness took work. Sungjin is a man of learning, a man of knowing. He couldn’t un-know what he’d seen, what he’d inferred about Jae, about Brian. Sungjin wasn’t built for that kind of work, had been raised to lead, to rule, to command, to learn and then execute.

In that sense, Jae had been right: he and Sungjin were different kinds of people, different colors, one perpetually in between--the other with no choice other than to be itself. It’s three years into the affair when Sungjin finds out and after, he too grows cold, distant, freezing the seawater back into sharpness--ice-cold and piercing so much so that it hurts Jae to see, to look at.

In the years that pass, not a word between them is spoken about it. Sometimes, Sungjin tries, but isn’t quite sure what to say, anyway. Did he want Jae to leave? Did he want him to stay? In the end, what Sungjin wanted was simple: he wanted to forgive Jae, knew that he couldn’t.

And when Jae comes home after the last time with Brian, he walks into the house and finds Sungjin in the kitchen, singing and baking cookies, his voice resounding in the room that smells like sugar and coffee and all the things he loves, all the things he is suddenly scared to lose. He wonders if forgiveness will be possible, says a quiet prayer before he calls out Sungjin’s name, before he asks if they can sit down and talk.

_Please. I’ll make it up to you--if I get the chance._

In the moment before Jae comes clean, sitting at the table with Sungjin across from him, eyes wide, jaw set, he lets himself take in the sight of the man he married: bright eyes, crease between the eyebrows, wide mouth set in a frown. _The calm before the storm._

And then Jae lets the story come spooling out of him, every confession, every secret, every detail that he’d kept hidden for so long. He watches his rock, his tower crumble, Sungjin’s fists clenching, anguish filling his eyes as Jae finally told him what he already knew.

“I’m so sorry, Sungjin,” Jae whispers under his breath. “I want to try again. Please. I love you so much--”

“--why did you even fucking do it in the first place?” Sungjin asked, voice shaking with anger. “Haven’t I given you enough?”

“It was--”

“--did he feel better than me--”

“--Sungjin, please--”

“--did he?”

Jae’s eyes brim with tears. “Please don’t do this.”

“Was it because he got you excited? Because he gave you a kick you couldn’t get from me?”

Jae shakes his head. “No--I just--he was just different. We were both just chasing ghosts--”

“--you shine lights on ghosts, you don’t fuck them for ten years,” Sungjin retorts, drawing his hands back from Jae’s.

“I was an idiot. We both were. We let the moment--”

“--is love always just butterflies to you?” Sungjin asks, his voice hissing as he draws out the question. “Didn't you think about me? About us? About how hard we worked, about all of the good times that we had together. Oslo was forever ago, Jae. We were happy, then and you just threw it all away.”

More tears slip down Jae’s cheeks. “Please. I’ll make up for it for the rest of our lives. If you give me a chance. Please.”

“I want to know everything,” Sungjin says, his face stern, his voice serious. “Every grim fucking detail.”  


 

After the first time, which Jae and Brian also swore would be the last, both of them tried--this time, to fall out of touch, to leave each other in the past, to let bygones be bygones, but both of them felt it nagging at them, gnawing at them: in Brooklyn, Brian kept finding his fingers straying toward Jae’s contact number on his phone (saved under Snitch), and in Los Angeles, Jae kept on finding himself clicking on Brian’s Facebook profile, scrolling through life events and comments: a concerto, a barbeque, a luau with friends. Jae added him. Brian accepted. They put each other on mute only to keep circling back, making the same excuses. For both of them, there was a morbid kind of thrill to seeing information about the other online: look, this life you could’ve had, look, this person who you could’ve spent your life with, these people you could’ve known, this life you could’ve lived. Jae made the mistake of going through Brian’s uploaded pictures, lingering on a photograph of Brian and Wonpil laughing in what looks like an orchestra hall. In the photograph they were both wearing navy blue suits, Wonpil cradled in Brian’s arms, Brian looking at him with loving eyes, an adoring smile. Jae felt the pain, the loss rush through him. He clicked the next photo: Brian and Wonpil at the music store picking out pianos, a photograph of Wonpil in their kitchen, lips downturned in a pout, his nose dusted with confectioners sugar. Jae saw Brian’s thumb obscuring part of the lens--probably caught mid-laugh, he thinks--and holds his thumb up to touch it.

_Mine._

In turn, Brian found himself going through Jae’s timeline, chancing upon a video that makes his heart ache: a video of Sungjin and Jae on their wedding day, someone in the background popping champagne, Blue Moon kicking up in the background, both of them laughing as the bubbles ran down the bottle, both of them reaching over to scoop it into their flutes before toasting--arms linked, heads tipped back. After, Sungjin pulls Jae to him and kisses him deep. Brian felt his heart lurch in his chest, a pang of jealousy he knew he had no right to feel tearing through him. In the video, Jae’s laughing, his smile wide, his eyes crescent moons. _I love you,_ Jae mouths to Sungjin.

In Brooklyn, Brian frowned.

 _Mine._  


It was Brian who broke the silence, Brian who sent the first message. Morse code of sorts.

WYD? Monaco tickets are on sale.

Jae’s reply had been simple.

When?

Summer for real this time.

The first time they met up after Oslo was on familiar territory: right on the riviera, a small villa in Monaco charged to Jae’s credit card. He’d set it for the week that Sungjin was at a conference with Mr. Park. Brian had told Wonpil that the trip was a reunion with highschool friends, one of them getting married soon. Both of them had been surprised at how easy it was: to forget the guilt, to forget the shame, to forget the people they were hurting, once they were lost in the sun and the sea and each other.

Being with Jae reminded Brian of a time when he was fearless--a time when all of his dreams seemed ahead of him, when every book he read and note he played seemed like an indicator of greatness, an omen that he was going to make it. Whenever they sat in the tub, pressed close, telling each other stories about home--they take off their rings on the plane there, they never talk about Sungjin and Wonpil--and about college, about the lives they’ve lived in between, Brian felt like whatever this was was a kind of signal too, like after this he would go back and be a better person, go back and practice harder, strive for more. Whenever they stood hand-in-hand in the surf, Brian felt like he was eighteen again, wind-blown and smitten, love just beyond the clouds on the horizon.

For Jae, it was more about the rush, the way that Brian always felt like fire to him: the way he never quite knew which way he would turn, if today he would be sweet and doting or aggressive and seductive, sulky or brimming with joy at the mere sight of the ocean. For Jae, being with Brian made him feel like the world still held mysteries, like there was something more unknowable for him to decipher. The thing Jae hadn’t realized about becoming a lawyer was that it turned you into someone who thought in terms of structures independent of your own will: the law is something laid down by someone else. In this, Jae could decide and still be overcome. In this, Jae could both say that no, he didn’t want to talk about the way that Wonpil’s concerto tour was being picked up by Tisch, and also be overwhelmed at how easily Brian would comply, how quickly he could put away this thing he wanted to share if only to have Jae undo him. It was a trite metaphor but Jae liked to play with fire, to see if it would burn him or warm him--and how long he could do both.

It gets easier over the years, gaining momentum, becoming a bad habit neither of them can shake. Paris, London, Austin, Amsterdam, the Caribbean.

E-mails, more secrets shared between them on their trips together, their love like candy hidden for when the lights turned out on Halloween: eaten in excess, until something has to give. Eventually, they talk about leaving their lives, their husbands, hint at it in passing: Brian talking about an apartment somewhere in Queens, Jae talking about moving East. As the years go by, they build their hypothetical home between them like a folktale passed between the members of the same tribe: each one’s fantasy feeding into the other’s. The apartment will smell like vanilla, will be bright and colorful with a breakfast nook, a reading room where they can enjoy their tea.

Brian doesn’t tell Jae about how relieved he is to see Wonpil when he comes home, about how he can’t resist the warmth of his laughter and his hugs, his kisses as he welcomes him back. He doesn’t tell Jae about the way that Wonpil’s eyes are always filled with sadness the first day he comes back, the way that it makes Brian weak inside to not to be able to take it away, the way that he can’t shake the nagging suspicion that Wonpil knows, that Wonpil stays anyway.

_Sustain._

Jae doesn’t tell Brian about the pain that runs through him whenever Sungjin turns away from him in bed, whenever he tries to start a conversation and Sungjin is there to meet him as an adversary, a prosecutor at court, how much he misses the days when they’d shower together and Sungjin would shampoo his hair, laughing at the way that Jae looked with bubbles on his head. He doesn’t tell Brian about how sometimes he wonders if it’s worth it, this thing they’re doing--if it’s worth always being so lonely, missing his rock, the rock that he’d built his life on.

_Yes or no?_

  


The last night is in Paris. They’re thirty-eight. Brian can’t sleep, is restless, has a supercut of the past decade running like a reel through his head: Jae in the summer, laughing against his skin, against a backdrop of sky, Jae in the autumn against the view of a city skyline, Jae tasting of birthday cake and champagne, Jae whispering _it should’ve been you, oh, Bri, why couldn’t it be you_ as he moves in Brian under the sheets--Wonpil waiting for him with a cup of coffee, pancakes slightly burnt but made with love, Wonpil kissing him on the sly as he’s composing music, Wonpil with a smile like a secret, Wonpil holding him close after he’s been away, Wonpil kissing him like he knows all of his sins but has chosen to forgive him anyway. Brian wonders about what’s going through Jae’s head, about whether or not they’re actually going to make this real. No man fights both sides of the war for long.

And so when Jae slips into his lap, easy as moonlight, still smelling of sleep and the body wash they’d washed each other with earlier, Brian asks the question, the one question both of them have avoided all of these years.

_Leave him?_

Jae had held him close, hadn’t answered, but instead touched every surface, every nook and cranny of his face--and in that absence of an answer, Brian knew, felt himself doing it too before neither of them said anything: his thumbs lingering over the landscape of Jae’s form. Memorizing him, turning him from body into thought, surrendering him to memory: this is the last time so make it count.

That night, they make love slow, tender, like they’re reading their favorite book as each of the pages burn. From here on in, only a memory, only fire and water kissing before everything goes dark. The next morning, they wake before dawn but hold each other close until the sun is high in the sky, kissing slow, prolonging every touch. They tremble and cry, hold each other knowing that in a few hours, they’ll be walking out of each other’s lives for good, that they’ll have to finally pay their dues in guilt and sorrow, shame and redemption.

“I’m sorry, Bri,” Jae says softly, tears spilling down his cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry for all of it.”

“It’s okay. Hey, it’s okay.” Brian holds him closer, rubbing his back. “We should’ve done better. We’ll do better.”

“I--time got the better of us after all--just--we built a life together, Sungjin and I and--” Jae’s voice breaks, the sobs tearing through him. “--I know you were my first love, I know that what we had was special it always will be.”

Brian smiles sadly, tears brimming. “Don’t talk about me in past tense yet--”

“--I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry--”

“--I loved you,” Brian whispers, choking back tears, because he did. Longing for the past, longing for the present, longing for everything lost, everything he had. “Really, I loved you so fucking much. I need you to know that, alright?”

“I loved you too,” Jae says, breathing deep, gasping for air. “You gave me back myself, Bri--I--I’m terrified--Bri, I love him--Bri, he’s never going to forgive me--”

Brian’s heart clenches, the thought of Wonpil flashing in his mind, the urge to go home lighting up in his bones. Finally, the sobs break free, clawing their way out of his chest, up his throat until they resound in the room.

“--you don’t know that. You don’t know that, okay?”

“I’m sorry I hurt you too--”

“--it’s okay, Jae,” Brian says softly, even if he isn’t sure if it is. “Maybe it’s just time for us to finally be where we are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ll be back with more joyful content next Monday. 
> 
> CC/Twt: @teenuviel1227


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